Meanwhile the session wore on, and William's cherished project of an Act of Indemnity was no nearer realisation. He had earnestly recommended it to Parliament in the Speech from the Throne, but nothing was further from the hearts of the dominant party in the Commons than the idea of amnesty. They seemed bent on assuring themselves the tranquil exit of Marshal Narvaez, who died in peace with all mankind by dint of leaving himself no enemies to forgive. An Indemnity Bill was for form's sake brought in at the beginning of November, but no progress was made with it. Proscription took the place of purgation. Lords Salisbury and Peterborough, Sir Edward Hales, and others, were marked out for impeachment and summoned according to their status to the bar of one or the other House. The Lords appointed a committee to inquire into the judicial murders of Russell and Sidney, and Sir Dudley North and Lord Halifax were cited before this body to answer for their shares, real or alleged, in these dark transactions. John Hampden, a grandson of the greater John, was conspicuous for the violence of his hostility to the official Tories, and by his instrumentality a committee was appointed to prepare an address to the King to remove the authors of the late failures and to appoint "unsuspected persons" to the management of affairs. The address, however, presented by Hampden was sharply criticised for the violence of its language, and the House of Commons ultimately laid it aside. So plainly, indeed, was the Whig party now losing ground in that House, and so grave had become their apprehensions of declining popularity in the country, that with a view of at least recovering their position at the polling-booths they resolved upon one of the boldest and most unscrupulous strokes of party tactics which our history records. Into a Bill then before the House for restoring the charters to these corporations which had surrendered them to the Crown, they introduced a clause excluding from municipal office all persons who had been implicated in the surrenders of such charters--or, in other words, all Tories, thus designing to fill the municipalities with Whig office-bearers and to secure the control of the elections to the Whig party. Smuggled into the Bill in a House half depleted of its members by the approach of Christmas, it needed a vigorous whip of the Tories to procure the rejection of this clause by a narrow majority; and William's disgust at this manœuvre was further intensified by the attachment to his much-desired Indemnity Bill of a bill of pains and penalties against political delinquents. So acute at this moment became his chagrin and disappointment at the condition of English politics that he was strongly tempted to wash his hands of the whole distasteful and thankless business, and he was with difficulty prevailed upon by his ministers to abandon his design of bidding adieu to the country which he had come to deliver and retiring to his native land.